Luis Scola

Ahhhhh, our epic Jusuf Nurkic vs. Nikola Jock Itch debates. 16-17 might become remembered as the year of the Nuggets big men Civil War. I wanna be on Iron Man’s side!

In a gutsy battle with the Craptors, the Nugs almost pulled out a great road win, putting together a huge 3rd quarter and getting a lead for most of the 4th. We the North still ended up notching the W, and so did Slim and the Nurk > Joke contingent! I still feel like I have to remind everyone that I ranked Nurk ahead of all experts, and was middle-of-the-pack-to-slightly-below-consensus on Jokic. But alas, I did think Slim was a little crazy saying he wanted Nurk over Joke outright, and after last night, it’s looking like it’s going to be a coin flip any given outing. The real head-scratcher is Nurkic lead the team with a preposterous 38 minutes. Lunacy! Ended up going 13/18/1/1/5 in a great line, but did struggle with the %s, shooting 5-14 FG and 3-7 FT. He’s just so big out there… Look at poor Pit-Pat trying to block him, what are you doing Pit-Pat?!

I think this matchup made sense, as Nurk is a good fit to D up The Luminescent Lithuanian, and with his size and D presence, can help out on the Lowry and DeRozan iso drives. Erstwhile, I thought Nikola Jokic looked pretty good, but only played 22 minutes, going 12/4/1/0/0. Shot 6-9, but 4 TO?! The Nugs only had 8 TO as a whole, so friggin’ Jock Itch had half their giveaways, plus had 4 fouls in that limited run. Just wasn’t his night.

So what to do with these guys? I think you gotta just deploy them as usual, and hope the coin flips your way any given game. As long as it doesn’t pull a Watchmen and land standing up. I think that was Watchmen, I know it was in the dumb movie Ed too, about Joey from Friends teaching a monkey to pitch. Hahahaha, how terrible. I just had to link the trailer, because I watched it for 30 seconds to be sure I was citing the right movie, and holy crap. This is the most fantastic 2 minutes of my life:

If that doesn’t make you laugh, nothing will! I’m all over the place this morning… To wrap that metaphor, I guess Kenneth Faried would be if the coin landed straight up, and at least he only saw 15 minutes. I wouldn’t be shocked at all if Nurk gets 22 minutes next time out, Jock Itch 35, and Jock Itch has the big game. Going to be frustrating game to game. But for last night, Slim gets to gloat! Here’s what else happened last night in fantasy basketball action:

October is here and you know what that means? Hoops is just around the corner. With preseason games beginning, the excitement for meaningful basketball is now officially reaching boiling point.

After being out in the wilderness for 6 weeks with no internet access, I return with a slightly different flavor from my previous pieces, but rest assured that if you are tuning in to see “Dynasty rookie rankings 41-60”, then they are just around the corner.

As you can imagine, the excitement of having all TV and internet services installed after such a long delay (man, what did we do in the dark world before the internet?!) were soon quashed by opening my browser and the first piece of news I see in basketball news is Ben Simmons suffering a broken foot in practice. Yet more hurt for those Philly fans, with yet another top draft pick spending significant time with the medical staff. It may well be that there is some kind of curse in Philadelphia, but let’s hope the uber-talented phenom will be back on his feet soon (excuse the poor pun).

If, like me, you have a penchant for the deep league, then this may well be the article for you. Of the big fantasy sports, basketball is obvious sport where you don’t want to miss early in drafts ,with a big drop-off in production differential from the top tier to the middle tier. But that doesn’t mean leagues can’t be won with crafty, late round selections. Without further ado, here are some late round fliers that might be tempting, depending on the depth of your league:

We did it! YES WE CAN!! Make rankings great again! Oh man, I’m ready for election season to be over… But I’m even more ready to have my top 200 out into the world!

So I don’t really have a sound philosophy for these final ranks… We do all of our rankings for 12-team, 9-cat H2H, since that’s how we play our Razzball Commenter Leagues. Shameless promo time! We need more RCL Players out there in Razzball Nation! Just follow that link and either start up or join an open league today! Anywho, in a 12-team RCL league (13 roster spots), you’re only drafting 156 players, so most of these ranks are guys you’re not drafting. Do I rank guys all as sleepers for your final pick? I’m not sure that really helps anyone. So the final ranks here are a blend of sleeper potential, and possible last-roster-spot-usability for a specific build. Is Arron Afflalo REALLY going to be your last pick? Meh, probably not, but maybe he has a hot month and it could be the first month! You never know… If you’re still catching up, check out all our ranks in the Top-10, Top-25, Top-50, Top-75, Top-100 & Top 150 which you can also find linked above in the 2016-17 Ranks menu. Here’s our final big rankings post, the Top 200 for the 2016-17 Fantasy Basketball Season:

As we prepare for the 2016-17 Fantasy Basketball Season, I’ll be taking a look at each NBA team with their major adds and drops to see if we can pan for any surprise rotational gold. This open is especially witty for the Nuggets. We’ll be counting down from worst NBA regular season to the best, mainly because I’m still figuring out how to rank the Warriors…

Brooklyn Nets (21-61)

Key Acquisitions:

G Jeremy Lin

F Trevor Booker

G Greivis Vasquez

F Luis Scola

F Anthony Bennett

GRandy Foye

G Chris LeVert (Rookie)

C Justin Hamilton

G Isaiah Whitehead (Rookie)

Key Losses:

F Thaddeus Young

G/F Joe Johnson

G Jarrett Jack (wahhhhhh!)

G Shane Larkin

G Donald Sloan

The Fountain of Youth

Ewwwwww, the Nets. I still can’t fathom how anyone could be a fan of this team. It just exudes boredom. Nothing exemplifies this better than what they did at PF, but we’ll get there.

While you’d expect a team this bad to overhaul they A) traded all their picks in that horrific Celtics deal and B) gave big contracts to Brook Lopez and Thad Young last year, apparently happy to stay in the status quo. If there was ever a team that looked stuck in the mud, it would be this one. Get ready to start yawning!

Who is this Bojan Bogdanovic we’re seeing lately!? Once a disappearing act at the starting 2 in Brooklyn, BoBo has moved to the 3 and it’s done wonders for his numbers. As we all know, the Nets’ SG position is the NBA’s Bermuda Triangle, so once he broke free of the curse, he finally started rackin’ up da goods! After putting up 44 on the Sixers earlier in the week, it seeming like less of a fluke after going 26/3/5/1/0 against the Bulls last night in only 29 minutes. It was uber-efficient too, going 10-17 from the field with 2 treys and 4-4 FT. What’s surprising about this scoring outburst is in these 70 Pts the last two games, only 18 have come from treys. As a starting F, he’s 18.9/4.2/2.4 with 2.2 treys in 10 games, further proof that the Nets SG position has been hexed by Miss Cleo. “I have drawn the ThrAGNOF, fluke, relegated to D-League and sub-15 minute cards!” At 55% owned, BoBo the bear could easily still be on the wire in your league, as he was even out there in one of my RCLs. Unfortunately he didn’t fit my needs – read: I was out of moves. Ugh! I got antsy with streaming as my non-bye week playoff teams are getting hexed by Miss Cleo too! “I have drawn the suck, suck, brick, and suck card!” Here’s what else went down last night in NBA action:

Ya know, Brandon Knight and The Dark Knight metaphor work pretty well as a parallel to my time here on Razzball Hoops. In 13-14, Knight was one of my first bolder calls that panned out (hey, it’s easier for me to forget the bad ones OK! …cough, MCW, cough…), exploding onto the scene as the Bucks PG like Batman Begins. I guess that implies I exploded onto the scene, let’s just say I feel like I was better than Batman & Robin, so that’s a plus… Then he was somehow even better for most of 14-15; the rare sequel that’s better than the original in The Dark Knight. In my second season, I was the only ‘pert to have #OccupyDraymondGreen top 100! Take that, Christopher Nolan! Then he was traded to the Suns, and thus far this season, we’ve only seen flashes of the former brilliance. Exactly like The Dark Knight Rises. He got a bigger budget with his max deal, and also got a longer run time. And while Anne Hathaway is hot and all, there’s a lot of things that just didn’t make sense. Only time will tell if Knight can break this analogy, because the next stop for Batman is this horrific looking dawn of justice movie hooblah. Whatever the hell it’s called… Why in the hell is Affleck going from Oscar-winning director to star of a CGI clusterF$*#?!?!?! Not like he needs the money! Knight returned last night (hah!) for 10/2/5/0/1 in 25 minutes off the bench after nearly 2 months out due to a groin. He looked pretty good out there, even though he shot only 2-9. Was cutting hard and ran into a mess of big men to scuffle for a board, so he’s not just coasting until the end of the season. Good timing before the fantasy playoffs! Hopefully you were able to hold; while I think he’s gonna be ho-hum compared to his numbers pre-injury with the Suns tanking, I do think he’ll be must-own. So here’s to hoping he’s finally healthy, and buck the trend of both the Batman franchise, or movies by Christopher Nolan. I have to buck the trend of this analogy too! Now THERE’S some pressure for 16-17 ranks! Here’s what else went down last night in fantasy hoops action:

Winter might not officially end for another couple of weeks, but Spring looks to have sprung for us up here in the northeast. Temperatures are climbing, the last of the snow has melted, the pretty girls are starting to peel away their heavy winter apparel, and the Toronto Raptors are reminding Canadian hoops fans why it’s never a good idea to buy into the idea that “maybe this will be our year.”

You’d think after nearly blowing a 15-point lead to the Blazers on Friday, and then actually blowing it against the visiting Rockets on Sunday, my Raps would take out some of their frustrations on the woefully bad Brooklyn Nets…yeah, not so much. Thanks to getting outscored 35-14 in the 2nd quarter, they were down 16 at half…to the Nets. The 18-45 Nets. That Toronto came back to win on the strength of 48 points from their All-Star backcourt of Kyle Lowry (23) & DeMar DeRozan (25) is besides the point. These extended periods of disinterested play against inferior competition are what have caused their early playoff exits each of the past couple years and Tuesday at the Air Canada Centre was just the most recent example of the team failing to learn from their past mistakes. If history is any indication, there’s going to be a lot more where that came from…

Whatever. I’m preemptively upset about it happening again and I don’t want to talk about it anymore, alright? Let’s just move past it.

For variety’s sake, we’ll change up the format again this week and break down Tuesday’s six pack game-by-game with a focus on the noteworthy fantasy performers who are helping and hurting owners as the playoffs fast approach.

I’m all for switching it up and trying something new to win. And while I think Hack-a-Shaq can work in the right situations, the Rockets took Hack-a-Whoever way too far. The Rockets fouled Andre Drummond repeatedly, giving him 36 free throws! At one point, K.J. McDaniels intentionally fouled Drummond 5 times in 9 seconds! (McDaniels finished the game with a very Jan Vesely-ish line of 1 minute, 5 fouls).

Drummond made only 13 of his 36 free throws, but it didn’t matter, as the Pistons still defeated the Rockets by 9. The 23 missed free throws was an NBA record for the most missed free throws in a game.

So you’re telling me the intentional fouling was effective in limiting the Pistons’ possessions, but somehow the Rockets still lost? How? The Rockets are definitely one of the biggest disappointments of the season and really need to turn it around if they’re going to make a splash in the playoffs.

While Drummond owners will be screwed in FT%, he still managed to post 17/11 with 1 steal and 1 block. Now onto the other highlights from Wednesday night’s games:

Gentle reader, I must confess: I have a sweet tooth. And a meat tooth as well. A touch of the wheat tooth, I suppose. Oh, and I guess you may as well throw in a gravy and mash tooth in there as well. What I’m saying to you is that I’m a glutton at this time of year, even more than most other times of the year. As the title suggests, there is slightly more of me to love at this time. And with Black Friday behind us, I think it safe to look ahead to the Holiday Season, and all the indulging that comes with it. I have to trim up. Which means trimming some fat off this old long-baller. How will I do this, I’m sure you’re asking yourself? By trading away the hard to shed fantasy players, of course! I see no other manner in which to do this than to do an (almost) all SELL article this week! So lets take a look at the following prime cut, as well as all the giblets…

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. This week’s article will be short because I’m traveling back home. As far as last week goes, it was just ok and I need to start taking some of my own advice. Anyway let’s get on with this 7 game slate:

Point Guards

Damian Lillard (9,100) has a usage rate of 31.5% and that is good for 6th overall in the league. Also, the Lakers give up the 2nd most fantasy points to PG’s. Lillard put a 65 spot on them last Sunday.

Ish Smith (6,600) has been over 40 fantasy points 3 out of his last 4 games with Jrue Holliday on the court. The matchup vs Utah isn’t the greatest, but Holiday is sitting out.